Sunday, July 14, 2013

The Last of Us fan art: "A New Daddy"

A friend of mine made me aware of this contest since he knows of my obssession with “The Last of Us”; however, I don’t own the game just yet (I ordered the “Survival Edition” from a retailer in the US on June the 3rd, it’s held at customs for almost a month now).
So just to make this clear, I don’t know anything about the game except for how the world from “The Last of Us” works – oh yeah, and I watched the intro sequence.

I always wanted to create a piece of fan art for the game and was quite disappointed to have missed the official contest a few months ago. I never thought that there would be another one, which is why I would like to send a big thanks to the “IT’S ART” team and “grey”, the guy who notified me about the contest.

I started on Wednesday morning and worked on this piece until today. As you will be able to tell from the very first sketches posted above this text I didn’t stick with my first draft: at first, I wanted to show that Joel and Ellie aren’t the last of us. That there are more like them out there, but maybe to afraid to show themselves. To quite literally illustrate this, I first went with another tall guy and small girl, hiding in the shadows with Ellie and Joel in the foreground. However, I wasn’t quite satisfied with the outcome. Even after altering the pose and gestures, resizing the canvas and so on, the picture simply remained too crowded and the message which I wanted to convey got lost.

The finished image is called “A New Daddy” and as you can see above, the man from the first sketches was replaced by two boys. Joel and Ellie reflect in the dirty window, with Ellie turning her head to see if she really just heard something or only imagined it… the three kids just spotted the two protagonists and the one in the middle appears to have made some noise which I guess upset his two friends a bit. :D

I imagined, what if there are more kids without shelter, without refuge in this doomed world, surviving because they work together, by forming bands and gangs (complete with leaders and members) and because they are quick and clever. A bit like the girl from “Aliens” maybe… would they want to have their own personal Joel? Especially after watching him taking care of Ellie and protecting her with his life?

no custom brushes or textures used!

I really put alot of love into this piece and I hope you enjoy it.
Oh, and please wish me luck for the contest! :)